DeaTH NoTe: OTher NoTes
by Sajju
Summary: This story is based on the original "Death Note" manga. The events are taking place 3 years later after the end of the Kira Case. New enemies and riddles, more mysteries and more Death Notes...
1. Prologue

**DeaTH NoTe: OTher NoTes**

Fan Fiction by Sajju

Beta Read by Oceanion

Original Manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

* * *

**Prologue**

Three years had passed since the Kira Case had ended. The world was finally returning to the way it was before. Most people started to believe that person known as Kira was either gone, dead or captured and there were no signs that he would continue his doings.

The crime rates around the world started to grow again. Those who wanted to commit a crime were no longer afraid that Kira would kill them – if they had that fear from the beginning, that is. Of course, this did not mean that criminals could simply do what they wanted to. There were and are others who would try to stop them, and one of them is no other than the world's greatest detective known as L.

The current L had a feeling that sooner or later another Death Note would appear into this world and that someone would pick it up. The appearance of C-Kira two years ago confirmed these beliefs. That is why L was always on guard. But nevertheless, he did not suspect that a challenge unlike any other was waiting for him.


	2. Chapter 1: Memories

**Chapter 1: Memories**

_A cold night. It seemed like it would start to rain soon. _

_The house's door was open. The lights were turned off. Three people were standing in the living room, and one of them did not belong there._

_The stranger was covered with darkness, and only his figure was visible. The owners of the house, a mother with her son, backed away from him. They were afraid. After all, the stranger held an axe in one hand, and something was dripping from it. Blood._

_The woman was hurt. She was telling her child to close his eyes as the stranger approached closer. The boy still could not understand what was happening, he was too young and shocked. Although the boy was standing quietly behind his mother, he was beginning to feel that something bad was going to happen. _

_As soon as stranger was close enough, he lifted the axe and struck..._

..

.

"Psst! Hey, Vince!" a familiar voice was calling for Vincent. "Stop sleeping!"

Vincent slowly opened his eyes. He saw that it was Kyle, Vincent's friend from high school, who woke him up.

"Oh, sorry. I guess I didn't have much sleep yesterday," said Vincent quietly with an yawn, and then remembered what he just dreamed about. It was weird. Not just the dream, but the fact that he had one. Vincent did not have any for a very long time.

"Oh, whatever," he thought.

After shaking his head, Vincent glanced at his watch. Sigh. There was still fifteen minutes before the end of the lecture. Vincent looked at the professor Wycoff, the one who was reading today's lecture, to see what he was doing. The professor was standing near the blackboard on which various schemes and formulas were drawn, and talking about Kirchhoff's circuit laws. Nothing special. Vincent looked around the class. He was curious to know what the other students were doing. Some were listening to the lecture very carefully and others were just daydreaming or whispering amongst each other.

The fifteen minutes passed pretty quickly. After the professor said his usual ending line "That's it for today," everyone in the auditorium started to get up and leave. Vincent didn't lose a second and left too.

Before the end of a lecture Kyle told Vincent not to wait for him and go straight home. Vincent didn't mind and headed for the exit.

When people looked at Vincent, they saw an ordinary 21 year old youngster with black hair and green eyes. No, it would be better to say with one green eye, because his right one was covered with an eyepatch. Maybe only that was out of the ordinary.

He had never had problems with studies and always seemed to be cheerful. Vincent never refused if someone asked for help. He was just another nice guy – or that was what he wanted everyone to believe.

It had been ten minutes since Vincent left the university. He lived close by, so he slowly walked towards home without a worry in the world. While Vincent was passing by an electronics store, something caught his attention. A TV behind the glass was showing the latest news with the headline:

_New victims of a serial killer_

Too bad that the sound was turned off. Otherwise Vincent would have listened to the news till the end. With a sigh he turned around and saw that someone was running in his direction.

"A female," Vincent noted.

He thought she would just pass him by and didn't bother to step aside, but something was wrong. When Vincent got a good look at the girl, he saw that she was running with her head down, running as if... as if the Devil were after her... On top of that, she also held a stack of books and a bag in her hands. Vincent knew what was going happen in next few seconds, but he didn't have time to step aside and… BAAM! She run into Vincent and they both fell to the ground.

"Ouch…" mumbled Vincent. "Hey-!"

But the girl didn't let Vincent finish. She got to her feet quickly, picked up the fallen books while exclaiming "I am sorry!" and continued to run forward. Without knowing what just happened, Vincent sat there speechless.

"Whatever," he mumbled again.

Vince stood up, cleared the dirt from his clothes, made a step – and felt something weird beneath his boots. He looked down and saw that he stepped on the books. Apparently that girl in a hurry forgot to take them with her. He picked up the top book and read its title.

"Psychology…"

He looked down again and saw another one.

"A black book? Is this a Bible or something?" Vincent took a guess. "Although it's thinner, more like a notebook..."

He bent down, picked up as well and then… something happened. Vincent felt like his brain was going to explode. In the next few seconds, he was…

School. Home. Black notebook. History lesson. Walton Vanbecelaere. Death. Another death. Heart attacks. Emotions. Shinigami. Death Note. Names. Ownership. Shinigami's Eyes. Experiments. Power. Criminals. Kira. L. Detective. Plan. Chase. Second Kira. Decision. Killings. Last name.

He was remembering things, finding memories which he lost a long time ago. Memories about a certain notebook he used… Memories about… Death Note… And in a matter of seconds they all returned to him.

"Death Note_…_?" said Vince in astonishment. "What the…? That girl…" he tried to figure out the situation he was in while checking the notebook. "Hmm… Interesting… Could this mean…?"

"He-he-he-heh," an evil laugh came out of nowhere. "Amazing, someone else picked it today, he-he-heh."

Suddenly, Vincent felt a presence of a large dark figure behind him. He didn't need to think long to figure out who it was. There could be only one being with such a voice and size. IT. Vincent met IT once before. IT was not an entity from this world. IT was called a God of Death.

Vincent turned around to confirm his expectations. That's right, it was a Shinigami.

Vince made an observation. The Shinigami's appearance, despite his size, was similar to that of a human. His skin was gray, his limbs were abnormally long and he had bulging yellow eyes with black irises. He looked very different from the one Vincent saw in the past.

"I assume it is yours?" he pointed at the Death Note.

"It was. Now, it belongs to you." answered the Shinigami.

"But how…?" and then Vincent noticed that people who were passing by were staring at him with questioning looks. "It would be better if we talk at my place, Shinigami."

"Fine with me," said the Death God. "My name is Ryuk, by the way."

"Uh-huh."

Vince quickly put the book and the Death Note into a briefcase and continued his walk home.

His home was an apartment located on the second floor of a five-story building. The apartment itself consisted of one room in addition to a kitchen, bathroom, WC and several other minor areas. Vincent moved to this place after he graduated from high school. Living alone and near the university was perfect for him.

After several minutes of walking and thinking of what to do with the Death Note, Vincent finally got to the apartment's door, opened it and entered. Ryuk followed him by simply passing through the wall.

Vincent took out the Death Note and put it on the table. So, what now? He did not think that he would get it back someday. But, in fact, he hoped for that.

"How did it end up here?" asked Vincent without taking his eyes off the Death Note.

"What do you mean, exactly?" said the creature behind him.

"The Death Note. That girl had it before I picked it up. Can you tell me how that happened?"

"Well, to be short: I dropped the Death Note and that girl picked it up."

"Okay… Then why she was running? Was she running away from you or something?" Vincent asked another question and turned around to face the Shinigami.

"Yes… Let's just say that I wasn't careful," said Ryuk. "I didn't expect that somebody would pick it up right away. The girl felt my presence instantly and when she saw me... Well, I think she got scared, and started running away from me. I didn't know what to do, so I followed her. And you know the rest."

"I see…" said Vincent with a dawning suspicion. "Wait, are you saying that you dropped the Death Note on purpose? Here? Why?"

"Hmm… Yes, something like that. You see, our Shinigami world is a not a place that you would call 'pleasant'," Ryuk started to explain. "It's a rotten world, quite a boring one, actually… Of course, not every Shinigami thinks like that. Usually they don't think about it a lot, they just live and do things like they always do. But I know how interesting the Human World can be. Then again… I thought I wouldn't find anything interesting here anymore at least for a while. It seems, I was wrong, he-heh."

"What that supposed to mean?"

"I didn't expect that someone who already used a Death Note would pick it up."

"Seriously?" Vincent asked, still somewhat suspicious.

"Yes, why?"

"Never mind… It doesn't matter, as long as I got it back."

"Anyway, what are you going to do now?"

"I need to find that girl. She can see you, so it can cause some problems, and I think I know how I can find her," With a smirk on his face, Vincent picked up his briefcase and pulled out a book from it. "This psychology book belongs to her."

He opened it and looked at the small piece of paper in it where various details about the book itself were written.

"Hmm. It seems it's from a library…Huh? Excellent, the book is from my university! This makes things easier. I can just ask someone from the staff who owns this book."

"Good for you. Will you kill her after you will find out her name?"

"No."

"Huh? Why?" asked Ryuk, almost disappointed.

"Because I kill only those who deserve to die. I doubt that she does."

"Then what will you do?"

"I don't know yet, but I will find another way to get rid of her… Anyway, now that I got the Death Note back, I may as well do something," said Vincent to himself. "Yes, definitely," Vincent put the psychology book back into the briefcase and pulled out a black notebook.

"Heh, I think I know the perfect person for it," he sat at his desk, laid the notebook on it and turned on the computer. After surfing the internet for a few minutes he found the person he wanted, took the pen and wrote that person's name in it:

_Jonathan V. White_


	3. Chapter 2: Unclearness

**Chapter 2: Unclearness**

L never stayed in one place for a long time if there were no special circumstances. It was just one of the precautions to hide his identity, and it was just about time when L and his team needed to move to a new place. Furthermore, he wanted it to become official headquarters. Anthony, Stephen and Halle figured that L, who was better known to them as Near, wanted to investigate some serious case.

The clock was showing 7:50 AM on Halle Bullock's watch when she arrived at L's apartment located somewhere in the middle of the enormous building. It was a place they used a few years earlier for investigations. It still had all the equipment Near needed and he agreed to stay there again. It was weeks since he started to work on some matter, and yesterday Near asked Halle and the other members to be at headquarters around 8 o'clock, saying something about solving the first part of a puzzle. Halle opened the door and entered a big room with a few lights on. In the middle of the room, a white-haired boy was sitting on the floor and doing something which Halle couldn't see, since she was facing his back. On the right side of the room Halle saw Anthony Lester, who was sitting on a chair and starring at the computer monitors. He heard Halle's footsteps and turned around to greet her.

"It seems that only Stephen is not here yet," he added.

Then the white-haired boy turned his head around and greeted Halle as well, after which he continued with his business. Now that she moved closer she could tell what he was doing. Firstly, there were many pieces of jigsaw puzzle lying on the floor, which Near was putting in into a rather large picture one by one. Secondly, almost all the pieces were white, and only a few of them were black and gray.

"A puzzle, huh?" thought Halle ironically, sighed and went to her seat.

It was more than ten minutes later that Stephen Gevanni finally came. When Stephen opened the door and stepped into the room he bent down and took a deep breath, as if he had been in a hurry.

"I am sorry for being late", the black-suited man apologized. "I found a case in which you will most likely be interested, Near. The details were sent to me this morning. It took me a while to get them ready them for you."

"Is that so? Fine, tell me about it later," said Near without looking at Stephen. "Now that you are all here, I want to tell you about my investigation. I wasn't sure about this one, which is why I didn't tell you anything until now. But now I'm sure...", he took four pieces of the puzzle and put them one by one into the picture. "... that it involves the Death Note."

Halle was not surprised, and she could tell just by looking that the others weren't either. During the time she worked with Near, she got to know that there could be only two possibilities why he would use so much time on investigating a case: either it was very complicated or it involved Death Notes. Not that there was a big difference between the two, but Near liked to put Death Note cases into a separate category, as they were something out of the ordinary.

"Let's look back to a few years ago," Near started to explain and placed a new piece into the picture.

"Remember what Light Yagami said about the last Death Note,that the real one is hidden somewhere and the one we had was a fake? I didn't put much thought into it then and, in fact, it didn't really matter if it was true. But the appearance of 'Kira's Copycat' two years ago made me think about something," Near turned his head to Halle and the others who had a questioning look on their faces. "No, I don't think he or somebody else found it. I am pretty sure that even if Light Yagami did hide the real notebook, it would be a place that only he could find it and nobody else. But what if there was someone else we didn't know about who was using those murder notes the whole time? What if someone else was using that notebook to his or her own benefit while we were focused on capturing Kira?"

Everybody looked at each other and thought for a second about what Near had just said.

"Someone we didn't know about?" Halle tried to understand. "Someone like Misa Amane? The previous L didn't know about her till she revealed herself as a fake Kira. If she didn't show up, we wouldn't have known that there was someone else with a Death Note. But I am sure Near isn't talking about her."

She saw that Anthony was confused too, but Stephen looked more serious as if he knew what Near was talking about. Near turned his head back and continued to explain.

"In addition, the fact that another Death Note could stillexist in our world made me think that even more could have existed at the time the Kira killings were taking place. In fact, I think that there could have been someone else who was using it the whole time. I don't know what their real intentions were, or when and where they started to do it, but I found the proof that such person exists, or at least existed." Near turned away to continue to solve his puzzle.

"Another Death Note user," thought Halle. "Well, that doesn't make sense. How could he stay hidden for so long? But if Near says he has proof…"

She noticed Near had only a few pieces of his puzzle left to solve. But instead of completing it, he stood up, took a remote control from the table and pushed a button on it. About ten monitors were turned on a few meters away from Near. They were showing pages of a notebook.

"I started to study all the details we had on the 'Kira Case' once again and remembered that even though we destroyed all the Death Notes, we still had photos of the pages of one. It was the final notebook used by Teru Mikami and, its pages were photographed by Gevanni, as you may remember," explained Near and looked at his assistants. "It wasn't easy to find the evidence, that's why it took me some time. At first, I didn't know where to start. How do you find someone who can kill people in any way they want just by writing a person's name in the notebook?" it seemed more like he was asking himself. "I think L had a similar situation back then, but he knew where to start as he found Kira's first victim. But now a first victim would be almost impossible to find. The Death Note was used too many times since then. However, the difference between now and then is that we already know of its existence and how it works. So, I acted based on that."

"I needed to find some sort of connection between the Death Notes apart from the fact that they kill people. I found it. Do you remember that Teru Mikami was writing the exact time of death? Yes, the general idea of my hunch was to compare the time written in the notebook and the time of death established by the specialists. When a victim's corpse is found by the police, they usually try to determine the cause and time of death by sending it to a coroner. Afterwards they write a report of it and put into their system," he moved forward, sat and picked a new piece of the puzzle. "Even during the 'Kira Case', law enforcement agencies were supposed to keep some records of this kind. I asked Lester to find all the reports he could about people whose names were in the note and then send them to me for analysis. The problem was that only a small amount of them were available, but still…", Near put a new piece into the picture. "I managed to find a pattern."

Near pushed another button on the remote control and started fingering his hair. The images on the monitors changed. Now they showed two different pages with people's names and times of death, one from the notebook and other from the reports.

"Look closely at the times of death in the notebook and compare them to the ones in the reports. What can you make of it?"

Halle started to examine them, as did the other two. After a while, the peculiarity of these records became obvious to Halle.

"They're different. Some of them have a different time", she said aloud.

Indeed, many of the times of death in the Death Note and in the reports were different. Some of them had a big difference, like a day or two. Others diverged by only a couple of hours.

"This means…"

"…there was someone who used the Death Note that was not one of the Death Note users we knew," Near finished Halle's line. "He or she managed to calculate the approximate time when Kira killed criminals in order to not draw much attention to himself or herself," he took the last two pieces of the puzzle. "This means someone was killing people the way Kira did and that someone got away with it."

The tension in the room suddenly increased. A chill ran up Halle's spine. The woman looked at Anthony and Stephen, who were also speechless. She examined all the monitors again, just to be sure that this wasn't some kind of mistake.

"I know. It doesn't sound very convincing at first. Of course, I considered the possibility that this could be some kind of anomaly, coincidence or just a mistake. But I dug deeper and found something else that was strange. Those people who had a difference in their time of death mostly died in three cities: London, Los Angeles and Tokyo. It really is something that exactly those cities popped out. I mean, from all cities in the world… Anyway, if I am correct, it's just a matter of time when this person will kill again. In other words, we must try to find him as soon as possible," said Near, just about to put the last two pieces of the puzzle into the picture when…

"Near, I think it has already happened," said Gevanni suddenly. Everyone in the room excluding Near looked at him in surprise.

"What do you mean?" asked Near still holding the last pieces of the puzzle in his hand.

"The case I was talking about earlier can be related to what you had just said. Here, look at these photos," Stephen removed a few papers from the folder he was holding this whole time and gave it to Near. He took the papers and looked at them. His expression was a little difficult for Halle to read. Near was indeed surprised, but at the same time he was smiling.

"It seems I wasn't entirely wrong. This is bad, but now I have something to start with," said Near.

Halle couldn't understand what he was talking about and came closer to Near to see those photos herself. What she saw was really hard to forget afterwards.

"Jesus! This corpse-!" exclaimed Halle, shocked.

The condition of the corpse… no, the way it was placed on the wall was truly horrible. The arms were spread to both sides and the legs were kept together and extended down the middle. It resembled a crucifixion, but there was more. The body was suspended on the wall by shafts, and each limb was impaled with the one or more of them. Blood was flowing from each wound. The torso was covered in black cloth and something similar to a scythe was in one of the hands. On the whole, it resembled…

"Shinigami," said Near catching the train of thought of his assistants.

Yes, it resembled a Death God, or at least the one who did it wanted it to seem like that. Halle remembered how people usually described Shinigamis: "Black coated, skull faced and with a scythe".

"There is more, look at the photo with the writing," Stephen broke the silence.

Everyone gasped in shock. There was an inscription above the corpse, written in blood.

_**Beware of the God of Death **_

The puzzle on the floor remained uncompleted.

**To be continued... **


End file.
